Thanksgiving in February

Well in 2006 my family was not really able to celebrate Thanksgiving in any way like we normally do. My family was living in temporary housing while their new house was being fixed so we spent Thanksgiving in Chicago and ate Indian food. While Indian food is my favorite I felt the lack of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it is not about material things or one up-ing someone by giving better gifts. There is no disappointment when you don't get what you don't want. Thanksgiving is so hard to commercialize. I adore it. I understand that there are some problems with its history, but the spirit of Thanksgiving is a spirit that I love. It's my favorite day of the year. So while I was home we celebrated Thanksgiving in February with some dear friends here in Valparaiso. Ken and Noel are two of the most important friends I have and I find a great deal of inspiration in them. They have an adorable little girl Rue, who also celebrated with us.

Ken, Noel, and Rue came over for a night of chili, cornbread, beer, pumpkin pie, and thanks right before I returned to Mexico. This meal of chili and cornbread just warms my heart. It is our special meal for Thanksgiving because we were all vegetarians for so long the norm was not available to us so we eat my father's chili. It was fantastic to get to have a night of thanksgiving and share it with our dear friends. It may have been a few months late, but I was all the more thankful that we had it at all.

Noel and her beautiful daughter Rue


My family with Ken, Noel, and Rue.


Me with Moira and Ken.


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Winnipeg and the Festival du Voyageur

This February I did something a little bit crazy. While on vacation from my job in Mexico I went to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Let's just say that the difference in temperature from Cabo San Lucas to Winnipeg was noticable. I was quite cold while there, but had an amazing time. I went to visit some friends and also to attend the Festival du Voyageur. It is a festival celebrating the history and culture of the French Canadian voyageurs, many of whom ultimately settled in Winnipeg. Most of my friends in Winnipeg are French Canadian and I know them all through a program called the Voyageur Wilderness Project. It is through this program that I go canoeing in Ontario each summer. I had a fantastic, if chilly, time and hope to go back someday. Many thanks to all who entertained me while there!

This is the St. Boniface Cathedral. It is the cathedral for the French Canadian community in Winnipeg. The original cathedral burned and a new one was built within the ruins. The photo is of the exterior remains of the original cathedral.


This is from within Fort Gibraltar. Back in the day the voyageurs would come here to trade.


At the festival one of the games one can play is Beaver Ball. There is a volleyball that has been covered with beaver pelt and basically Beaver Ball seems to consist of whatever one might want to do with the ball. We started out trying volleyball, but the ball was essentially frozen and that was painful so we moved onto soccer and finally cuddling with the ball. It is surprisingly warm.


My hosts, Marieve and Guy, have a new Beagle puppy named Kano. I adore him.


At the festival there is a snow sculpture competition. This was the main snow sculpture, located at the entrance to the grounds. What does it remind you of?


Marieve and Guy took me 5 pin, or Canadian, bowling. Some of you may know that I love bowling and I have to say that I might even love Canadian bowling more than our US 10 pin bowling. There is a whole different art and strategy to Canadian bowling.


These are my VWP buddies. It was great getting to see them all. I wish the rest had been in town. I have so many more friends up there I was unable to see, but it was great seeing these guys. Thanks for a great night!

Strange job perks

So I have been thinking about posting this for a while now. Unfortunately, I have no photos of my favorite strange job perk. Basically, it's this....for our toilets we take in sea water. Besides having a filter so no fish end up in the bowls it is straight sea water. This means that in places we take on bioluminescent plankton, or phosphorescence, or the stuff from that scene in the beach when they are in the water at night kissing and the water is glowing. That ought to cover it for everyone. So bioluminescent plankton glow when they are moved around, for instance when the bow of our ship plows through them. Another way they glow is when you flush the toilet and they happen to be in your toilet bowl. I had heard that this happened, but never believed it until I saw if with my own eyes. It's the strangest job perk ever to be able to go into my cabin head with the lights off, flush the toilet, and see this amazing, if brief, light show. I almost think they should put it recruitment flyers because that's pretty neat. What other job gives you that. So that's the job perk that I love most and honestly miss a bit being back here on land.

Speaking of being on vacation and on land I did this incredible thing today. It's incredible because I hate cold - thus the winter job in Mexico - an incredible amount. I, today, bought a plane ticket to Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada for this weekend. It's been a balmy 40 below C of late so my tan is not going to be getting better there. BUT, I am sure I will have amazing pictures of the Festival du Voyageur, one of the reasons I am going. So check back!

Vacation!!!!!!!!

I just finished the first week of my off rotation, i.e. my vacation. I worked for 42 days and now I have 21 off. I spent the first 8 or 9 days in Cabo San Lucas with my friends and I am now sitting in cold, cold Indiana visiting my family. Before I came back to the Midwest I spent over a week on the beach,

taking shots upside down

spending time with beautiful people


meeting Mexican men

and watching drunk, old people dance badly.


It was a wonderfully good time and I am sad it is over. As sick as it may sound I am looking forward to going back to work. This is only partially because it is less cold down there in Mexico. I also just like being at work. But, I could have taken a few more days of vacation in Mexico rather than in Indiana (it was 20 below today).

Wildlife sightings.

Well I have pasted the billion mark on seeing pelicans. Oh, wait that was my first day on board. The pelicans are everywhere. Sometimes they even try to come on the boat as the pelican below did.

This pelican, by the way, is the stupidest pelican ever born. This photo is not the first time that day he tried to fly through our window, or into the side of the boat.

I have also seen sperm whales. One morning during breakfast we were literally surrounded by them. They were all over the place. I never got a great shot of one, but below you can see their strange heads.

And one exhaling.


Other wildlife sightings include a trip to see some dying squid after a beach visit. The squid had come up, basically to the shore to spawn and then once they have done so they die. I don't have any pictures of them, but I'll try to get some from my co-workers. One person was able to get a video of one changing colors as it lived out its last minutes. This happens because the squid have the ability to change colors, but when they die they cannot control how this happens and therefore the colors change rapidly. It's pretty awesome to watch.

Besides that there have been a ton of birds. I could not even tell you what kinds. Many sea lions (see a previous post for photos). We see lots of fish when we are docked. At one beach when we anchor the water just off the stern is always full of puffer fish. We learned that they bite when one of the DIB drivers put her foot into the water and got a bite. I have seen many crabs also. When we are one the beach we often find the dried remains of puffer fish, sea stars, crabs, parrot fish, and other mystery aquatic beings. Unfortunately I have (for now) very few photos. I'll track some down when I get to Mexico though.

Skies blazing with color.

One of the best job perks I have is that every now and then there is an amazingly beautiful sky and I'll actually have 2 minutes free from work to enjoy it. Baja has offered some resplendent skies in the past two months. Many I admire as I go about getting ready for breakfast or dinner from within the dining room, but for a few I have had the chance to go out back to the fantail to take in the beauty of the sky changing colors before my eyes. Below are some pictures.

Back postings begin.

Well, I have been in Mexico now for a few weeks and it's been crazy being back at work. The waves are a lot worse here than in Alaska so we have had to deal with a great deal of seasickness. Luckily, I have yet to fall victim to the waves. We are half way through our third week of cruising following one week of training. During training I learned that if I am ever stranded in a life raft at sea and a puffer fish jumps into the raft I should not eat it. I got paid to learn that, which was kinda nice and kinda a waste of time.

Anyway, Mexico is very beautiful and we have seen some pretty amazing things and I barely get to get off the boat. There is one day when the passengers get to get snorkelling with sea lions. I am hoping to get to go one day, but I have been able to take some pretty cool photos of them. There are incredibly noisy and we can hear them barking all the way from the boat.


I have not been able to take that many photos because I spend so much time working, but I am going to work on taking more photos and as I do I will work on getting them posted up here and explain a bit about them.

Here is a photo of Los Arcos. Los Arcos is the southernmost point in Baja California Sur and is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortes. Each week we pass it around dusk as we leave Cabo San Lucas at the beginning of the cruise and then again around dawn the last day of the cruise as we return at the end of the cruise.


Lastly, for now anyway, here is a photo of the really bad weather we experienced. I took some amazing videos of the waves crashing over the bow. The morning I took the pictures we were experiencing 6 to 8 foot swells. That night we couldn't leave our anchor location because the waters we were going to enter had 14 foot swells and that is higher than our bow.

For a week (or two) I was engaged.

So the other week I spent a week being engaged to another of the crew members. The story basically goes that my sister met Brett when she went a cruise with the company I work for this past summer and she fell in love with him. Since he is 30 and she is 10 she decided it would be inappropriate for her to marry him and instead commanded me to do so were I ever to meet him. Then three days after I arrived in Mexico he showed up to work for a while and I informed I had to marry him. He then had some passengers I waited on each day ask me about my engagement and then Brett, myself, and my wonderful 8 top had a great week having fun with this "engagement". Eventually even rings were exchanged, one was even legit, and in the end I did not end up married, but I have gained a good friend. I unfortunately got my sister's hopes up as she believed for a bit that this marriage was going to go through. Maybe one day, but Brett doesn't believe in arranged marriages so we'll have to fall in love first. Anyway, I am posting some photos of my week of being engaged because they are rather funny. My gratitude to John, one of our passengers for taking them and passing them my way.

When I asked Brett to marry him and gave him a ring


My ring from Brett


He quite literally swept me off my feet during dinner service.